Fire on the Prairie: September 2005

By Emily Udell and Aaron Sarver, In These Times. Posted September 14, 2005.

In this month's episode of Fire on the Prairie, Amy Goodman speaks at the International Labor Communicators Association conference in Chicago. The host of Democracy Now! talks about embedded journalism in light of last August's anniversary of the atomic bomb attacks on Japan.

Goodman: The media hasn't perfected this "embedding" process ... what do you get from that perspective? It's a perspective, it is interesting to hear what's happening with the soldiers on the frontline, but it's just one perspective, and yet it's almost the only one we've gotten in this war. Where are the images from Iraqi hospitals, from Iraqi communities from around the world?

Reporter Andrew Stelzer interviews writer and professor Samar Dahmash-Jarrah about her new book Arab Voices Speak to American Hearts and her work to create a dialogue between the two cultures she calls home.

Jarrah is a professor in South Florida. After 9/11, she went to Jordan, Kuwait and Egypt and asked a dozen random Arabs 100 questions submitted by Americans. Andrew Stelzer spoke to her about the answers to those questions, found in her new book.

Jarrah: There is an unbelievable desire and hunger among Americans to listen to Arab voices ... so for 3 1/2 years all I did was answer questions on behalf of Arabs and Muslims, and finally I said maybe it's time that Arabs answer these questions Americans keep asking me.

Finally, Aaron Sarver interviews journalist Jamie Kalven, who seeks to broaden the discussion around public housing.

Kalven: I think when we use the words "public housing" we're actually talking about a number of other things besides housing, if you consider what those two words evoke. We've now been lost and locked into a kind of impoverished discourse that treats public housing as a housing issue. ... So I think we need to start somewhere else, and our experience has brought us to first look at the fundamental issues of human rights violations by the state, through the police department, in the context of the so-called war on drugs.

              

Aaron Sarver is an associate publisher at In These Times. He also co-anchors and co-produces Fire on the Prairie.

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